Tropes vs Women in Video Gaming - Damsel in Distress

Let's also be reminded that she stressed that she was focusing on the main franchise, not the games that were developed outside of it by companies that had licensed it to create them.

No, she's picking and choosing games and ignoring anything that even slightly goes against her ridiculous views. She picked mario and zelda as examples of bad portrayals of women in video games: She couldn't have picked worse examples to support her points. No, the Mario RPGs aren't developed outside of nintendo, they're made by two of nintendos studios, Alpha Dream (Who only make Mario & Luigi games, as well as hamtaro games for Japan) and Intelligent Systems (Who only make lots of different Nintendo games, including Paper Mario, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars,Pushmo and Warioware).

Even on a temporary basis, it's not a fallacy. I even addressed this using Yuna in FFX. It's fitting, even if she has a strong presence and is being helpful later. (Hence the creation of 'The Helpful Damsel,' which doesn't preclude someone from being of use at one point and then being damsel'd in another.)

Oh pineapple, you got me started. I didn't say "Hey give me some non zelda exmples", I said "don't get me started on why zelda is a fallacy of a damsel in distress.

Lets go through the main Zelda games she mentioned then, shall we?

Ocarina of time? She knew Ganondorf was evil before anyone else, warned the king and got laughed off, then tells you how to get the other pieces needed to obtain the master sword while she continues to spy on him. Then, upon Ganondorf making his move she takes one of the sacred items needed to get into the sacred realm (The Ocarina of time) and attempts to escape from the castle with it so that Ganon can't get into the sacred realm, because link wasn't back in time. Then she manages to haphazardly throw link the ocarina because he has the other 3 keys to the sacred realm, and she's being chased by Ganondorf. Link then screws up and lets ganondorf into the sacred realm and dissapears for seven years, all the while zelda manages to evade capture while undermining actively undermining ganondorfs rule. When link finally comes back, she helps him with all the information she gathered over the 7 years, and ganondorf never even suspects she has the triforce piece and is zelda, despite searching for both of those things the entire time.

Then, at the very end, she drops her disguise right next to Ganondorfs castle and is captured. Link, being right next to the castle, follows in after to try and kill Ganon (ultimately only sealing him in the sacred realm). You think that's an example of feminism? You need to read hyrule historia: If Link fails and dies, Zelda seals him instead with her magic power. She just didn't have enough time to escape on her own before link got there. Also of note, the ONLY reason ganondorf didn't immediately capture link in the same way is because he had the master sword on him at that point, which inherently prevents any dark magic affecting the person holding it (It was not, in fact, Links penis that stopped him being captured), which unlike Zelda who managed to evade capture for 7 years, was down to complete damn luck more than anything, because if it didn't work like that, link would have been dead the moment he stepped out of the temple of time in the future.

Wind waker?
Zelda is the captain of a pirate ship, one of the first conscious acts you see her doing is stopping link killing himself (by running off a cliff) leads an attack, TWICE on ganondorfs fortress, with the second time she arrives just as link is about to be killed by Ganondorf and prevents him from killing Link, but unfortunately results in him discovering that Tetra is zelda and has a piece of the triforce. Yes, they do then leave her in old hyrule, because it just became abundantly clear that they cannot stop Ganondorf, and if she stays anywhere else, he WILL kidnap her. That he does eventually make it into old hyrule is because link fucked up again, not because zelda couldn't do anything. But yes, he kidnaps her when he finally gets down there (again, just before link returns)

Then you catch up to him, oh, and what's this? He beats link up to the point of near death, again. And then Zelda joins in with her magical light arrows and suddenly they're able to fight him. The entire point is that neither of them can fight Ganon alone, but then people make this a gender issue?
Links sister would be a better example of an actual damsel in distress in the game, but she's like , 4 years old and kidnapped by a monster bird. I think ANY 4 year old would find themselves unable to do anything in that situation (again, NOT a gender issue!)

Twilight princess:
You see zelda grand total of three times in the 40+ hour game. And never is she kidnapped nor do you ever save her. Yes, she's imprisoned in hyrule castle for the length of the game. But that's because she was the leader of hyrules ARMY and had just lost the war against the twilight army, and Zant was going to start razing hyrule to the ground if she didn't surrender. However, her magic and the triforce of wisdom make it clear she's already the strongest human: She is literally the only person who isn't transformed horribly when the twilight falls over the castle (And most of hyrule!), regular people become ghosts and can't interact with the real world anymore, and even Link gets forced into his wolf form which knocks him completely unconscious and captured (Where he couldn't escape without Midnas help). Without Midna, link would have been stuck
Zelda just maintains her human form, but does nothing despite being absolutely able to because she doesn't want to get the entire population of her country killed (Because she's actually the queen at this point, but her ceremony got delayed because of the war).

The last time you see zelda, she helps you fight Ganon. She's not important at all in the game, but still, Link wouldn't have been able to kill Ganon on his own.

And then we move on to Midna. The fact that her Video completely disregards that the main character of the game is to push her own agenda is bullshit (I can't put that any other way). She is literally the twilight princess (yeah, sorry if anyone didn't want the games ending spoiled ), she saves link when he gets trapped in the twilight , when both her and Link are attacked by zant , and she ends up near death after Zant forces her to exist in the light world (which is as poisonous to twilight realm people ,as the dark world is to light world people) them, with link stuck in his wolf form, rather than begging for help, she demands that link goes to zelda (for the second time in the game) so that she can tell zelda how to change link back before Midna dies.

Fortunately, at this point, zelda realises who Midna is and gives her the triforce of wisdom she has been carrying (Essentially condemning herself to death to save midna, and you don't see her again until the very last boss fight), to save Midnas life, because she thinks that Midna can stop the evil roaming the land. Again, not link, midna.

It would take far too long to go through everything Heroic that Midna did throughout the entirety of TP, because like I said, she's the main character in TP, not link or zelda. Disregarding her just to make the ridiculous assertion that the game is against women, or displays that they need protection is making me angry.

And Skyward sword. Oh man, skyward sword. First time you see Link and zelda interact, she save slink from falling to his death (Admittedly, she pushed him off, but still), then (as shown in the credits of SS) she goes on her own adventure through hyrule, travels to the past and seals the evil god for hundreds(thousands?) of years while waiting for link to hurry up and get the triforce (which zelda created! Oh, did I not mention, she is a reincarnation of god? Definitely a weak women who needs protecting, that!), and does get grabbed at the end, because link fucked up and was followed by the games main bad guy (Whom he should have included in the triforce wish to get rid of...), and that apparently using your sealing magic continously for hundreds of years makes you easy to kidnap. Oh, and he hit both link and zelda with the same magic attack, and it left the pair of them barely able to move. If Link had happened to be the god there, he would have been taken and not zelda. It's just that he is a worthless nobody compared to the god of the land.

Since I'm willing to be educated, I'd like more examples outside of the Mario universe. You've picked up on Luigi's Mansion (and I even pointed out Mario is Missing, which is disgustingly horrible). But this is only a handful of games that I'm seeing out of thousands that exist, which still makes it that much more problematic to me.

You want more examples? k. But I'll keep these examples more brief.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Shanoa is sent to kill dracula because her male counterpart is too weak and useless to do it, as well as an attempt to save him from using getting himself killed and using the spell that is required for a non-belmont to be able to kill drac.
Obviously every metroid game has you playing as Samus.
Golden sun : Lost age. When you finally catch up to the other party, from the first game, the bad guys deliberately seperate the only female of the group (Mia) from Isaac and Garet because her magic would be much more dangerous to them than issacs or garets, adn the two of them can't defend themselves, and your characters have to go save the two.
Pokemon: Pick to play as a female character; go save the world., including often specific people who can't defend themselves at various points in thegame (E.,g team rocket threatening head of silph co.)
Chrono trigger: Main character, Chrono becomes the "damsel" part way through after the first real fight against the final boss, with the majority of female party (3 females, a robot and 1/2 males depending on if you let magus join) then going on a quest to save him.
Xenoblade: Sharla. Her dumbass brother repeatedly runs off into trouble where he can't possibly deal with the situation, his sister then has to go save him (with the party). The moment the 7th party member (who is female) shows up, she repeatedly saves the party from horrible imminent death.
Beyond good and evil: Multiple times where Jade has to save Pey'j and the other later partner, whose name escapes me.

So then that begs a class-related issue. Where are your lower and middle class girls?

Uh? First, they're "your" lower and middle class girls, because you're the one bringing that up as something important (I don't think it is). There are tons of games where you can play as heroic -not princess- girls "saving the day". See above for a few examples. Someone already posted the 2 tv tropes pages with a bunch more examples. Read those if you really need more.

But yes, I'm out of this thread too. It's all pointless circular arguments on the internet about something ridiculously useless, and will never change anything. (Yes, the irony is not lost on me ending a huge post with this).

If you all feel so strongly, you should go join actual feminist groups and protests,etc, all this circlejerking (both by the people who think it's a problem, and by the people who think it isn't) as zelokva put it is going to change exactly zero peoples point of view, especially on a site as small as southperry.